Little Birds
by Mark of the Asphodel
Summary: A short story involving Leif, the last snow of winter, and some greedy little birds. Takes place in between the Generations of FE4- or between Gen 1 and Thracia 776, if you prefer. Assumes the Illustrated Works timeline, but it doesn't matter much.


**Little Birds**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

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_Alster, 765._

When Leif woke that morning, he saw snow piled thick on the windowsill outside his room. He placed both hands against the window and peered outside until the glass fogged and left hand-prints on the pane, but he couldn't really see anything. The window glass was thick and gray and made everything bent even when it was sunny.

Finn and Raquesis talked about the snow while they all had breakfast. Finn said it would likely be the last real snow before the spring came, and Raquesis wanted to take Leif and Nanna both out to play in it. Leif ate his breakfast quickly so they could get outside faster, but he was scolded for it and told to slow down and eat his porridge like a gentleman. Nanna was eating her porridge like a proper lady, Finn said, and Nanna wasn't even three. Leif was four and ought to know better.

After that, Leif ate his porridge _very slowly_, just to show them that he was better at table manners than Nanna. But then he ran out of porridge and cream and Raquesis took him back to his room to dress him up for outside.

Outside meant a garden inside the castle walls. Alster Castle had thick walls and many courtyards and little hidden gardens that were fun to play in, but Leif remembered outside,_really_ being outside, and he missed it. But he wasn't allowed to go there any more and the hidden gardens were better than nothing. This garden had a courtyard paved with colored stones- red and white like game-board- and lots of little trees. But now the stones were all covered up by snow, and all the trees had a layer of snow on top of each branch.

The snow was three fingers thick, Raquesis said, and she meant her fingers and not Leif's. Everything was covered up by it, and the bushes made to look like animals were all wearing fluffy white coats instead of looking like twisted brown skeletons. Leif ran up to the one that looked like a lion and began to shake it in hopes the snow would fall off. He hadn't got far before Raquesis picked him up from behind.

"Be careful. If all that snow falls on you, it'll hurt you. Each flake weighs almost nothing, but put it all together and it's heavier than you think."

And she led him back to the other end of the garden. Nanna had made a lot of hand-prints and boot-prints in the snow and now Finn was using a fallen branch to help her to trace the letters N-A-N-N-A in the middle of it. Leif made a few hand-prints of his own, and it was funny the way the snow crunched and went flat, but it wasn't very exciting. He scooped up a pile of snow together and tried to make a ball out of it, but it wouldn't stay round and just crumbled apart when he tried to pick it up.

"Are you having a good time, Leif?" Raquesis asked him.

"Yes," Leif said, because he'd learned that it was rude to say "No" when people tried to do nice things for you. Even when "No" was the truth.

But when he looked up at Raquesis, he saw her cheeks were pink and she looked very happy, and Leif smiled and tried to be happy too even though snow wasn't as much fun as he thought it would be. Raquesis had wrapped him up in so many clothes that Leif felt like he couldn't move his arms right, and the scarf she tucked around his neck was scratchy, and they wouldn't let him shake the snow off the animal trees.

"Do you hear all the birds, Leif?" she asked him then.

Leif listened for a moment, and then he agreed that he heard lots of birds chirping. They were all in the trees, fluttering around from branch to branch. And then Raquesis announced that she had a surprise, and if Leif held out his hand, she would give him something special.

Leif held out his right hand (not both at once- that was rude, too) and Raquesis poured a little heap of black shiny seeds into the middle of his mitten.

"The birds here are very tame, Leif. If you're still, and you hold out some food to them, they'll eat right out of your hand."

Raquesis held out her own hand, with a pile seeds in the middle of it, and one of the birds swooped down from the tree and landed on the tips of her fingers. Leif tried to stay as still as a statue so he wouldn't scare it, but the bird didn't stay long. It grabbed up a seed and flew right away with its prize. Leif thought the bird was greedy and rude, but he wanted to feed it anyway. It was pretty. He stood beneath the tree, right where Raquesis had been standing, and he put his hand out and waited.

Nothing happened. The birds were right there- one was very close to Leif, on a low branch just in front of him. The bird had a bright blue cap on its head, and shiny green wings, and a yellow belly that looked like it would be nice to touch. It sat there on the low branch and looked at Leif with its black eyes. It was watching him.

"Here," Leif called to it, and he held his hand up, just as high as he could without spilling anything. But the little bird just turned its head back and forth, watching.

"Be patient, Leif," he heard Raquesis say. She was giving seeds to Finn and even to Nanna so they could feed the birds too.

Leif tried to be patient. He watched three of the bright little birds come to eat out of Raquesis's hand. He watched a bird land on Finn's shoulder and sit there, glaring at the other birds who were eating all the seeds. One bird even landed on top of Nanna's head after Finn balanced a seed on top of her hat. Leif put a seed on top of his own hat after that, but the seed fell off and anyway, the birds with the soft yellow bellies didn't like him.

"Come on! I have food for you!" he called out, but they didn't come. Then Leif noticed a different kind of bird, a little larger than the yellow-bellies, that had come to sit on the wall. It was brown, with a rosy belly and a little crest on its head. It made a sweet-sounding chirp, nicer than the noise the colorful birds made, and Leif decided he was going to feed it.

Nanna saw it too, and she forgot about the seeds in her hand and pointed at the brown bird. Leif watched as Nanna's seeds all went into the snow.

"Oh, that's too bad, Nanna. There isn't any more," said Raquesis, as Finn went down into the snow to help Nanna pick up whatever seeds they could find. Leif felt a little bad for Nanna, but not much, because a bird had landed right on her head and none had come to him.

"Here, little bird," he said, not so loud this time. Maybe he was scaring the birds away by not being quiet enough.

The brown bird looked at him, and Leif thought it seemed hungry. Its eyes were sharp. And it was hungry- Leif watched as the brown bird hopped from the wall and flew toward Raquesis. It hovered above her hand for a moment, then landed just long enough to steal a seed and went right back to its perch on the wall. It swallowed down the seed and sat there, still watching them. Leif watched back, willing the bird to come and visit him and not any of the others.

"They're very light, no heavier than a silver coin," he heard Raquesis say. She was being very quiet but her voice sounded happy, like she was smiling inside and Leif should be too. "They look round and fat but they're all puffed-up air and feathers- isn't that funny?"

It was funny, but Leif didn't laugh or even smile at it. That bird was going to come to him even if he had to wait in the snow with a handful of seeds until the sun went down. And he waited, being good and patient with his hand out, but nothing happened. He heard Finn and Raquesis talking behind him, but he was paying all his attention to the bird and not to them... at least until Raquesis called out his name.

"Leif, Nanna has to go in now because she's too little for this cold, but we can stay out a little while longer."

Leif, still busy in a silent conversation with the brown bird, looked away just long enough to see Nanna riding on Finn's shoulders as they went in. Leif realized that he was cold and his cheeks stung and his nose was getting runny, but he wasn't going in unless Raquesis picked him up and carried _him_ like a baby.

Then Leif had an idea.

"Maybe you don't like my mittens," he said to the bird. Leif took off both of his red mittens- one at a time, so he wouldn't lose all the black seeds. He put the mittens on the snow, where they looked very bright and maybe a little frightening, like blood.

Then Leif held out his hand again to the bird... and waited. His fingers turned very pink and began to ache a little, but Leif stayed where he was, perfectly still with his hand outstretched. Then, the bird rose from its perch and swooped down towards Leif. It seemed to hover just beyond him for a few seconds, but then it landed on his hand, just like it had done with Raquesis. She was right- it weighed almost nothing, but even though his hand was very cold now, Leif felt its claws like little needles in his fingers.

But only for a moment. An eyeblink later, and it was back up on the wall with a shiny black seed in its beak, looking down at him with eyes as bright and black as the seed. Leif watched as the bird swallowed down the meal that he'd given it.

"You're welcome!" he shouted up at it, and the bird made its sweet-sounding chirp.

Then Raquesis made him come inside because his nose was runny and his fingers were going to be frostbitten if he didn't put his mittens back on. Leif almost scattered the rest of his seeds out on the snow before he went in, but he thought better of it. This might really be the last snow of the winter, but that wasn't _for certain_. He'd save those seeds for the next snowy day, and when it came, he'd be ready.

"Goodbye for now!" he called over his shoulder as Raquesis led him away, and he heard one single, sweet chirp in all the chatter.

**The End**

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Author's Notes: Based on their relative ages according to _Thracia 776_ and the various timelines, I'm assuming Leif was born at the end of year 760 (autumn or early winter) and Nanna was born during the first half, or even the first quarter of 762.

The colorful birds are inspired by both chickadees and blue tits (the latter found in Europe and Western Asia). The brown bird is inspired by titmice and by the English robin. So these birds cannot technically be found on our planet.


End file.
